Please!! This place is horrible
They must be joking!! This is AT BEST a 3 star hotel......and a badly managed one at that. With all due apologies to those who wrote good reviews of this dump.....I can only wonder if you may have been caught up in the undeniable romance of Venice.....and been blinded to the astoundingly bad service and room quality of this vastly overated and overpriced snake pit.
First......the rooms. Their excuse for ANY complaint about the run down condition of the place was "it's a very old, historic hotel". Right. So this means you can't shampoo the carpets in the rooms? I was afraid to walk barefoot in our room. The carpets were filthy......the paint was dirty as hell in many places.....it really looked as though NOTHING had been done to the room for 10 years. And the fact that it's a historic hotel prevents them from putting in decent beds? I've still got a back ache from the cheap, saggy mattress in our room.
And the fact that it's an old, historic hotel means they can't give you decent sheets? You get the cheapest, scratchiest sheets you can imagine. I'm not joking.....it was like being in prison....the sheets were almost like sandpaper....I don't remember EVER feeling sheets that were so scratchy. To think that this hotel is owned by the same chain that owns the Westin hotels...which have the best bedding in the business...in beyond the imagination.
Ok...suffice it to say that the rooms are a disaster (at over $500US per night, I should add). How about the service? Again....words can't do justice.....
Let's start with the phones......on THREE occassions I tried to call downstairs to get some info...all three times I tried the hotel operator, the front desk, and finally the concierge. NO ANSWER. I was totally ignored. My wife tried while I was in the shower and had no luck with the hotel operator or the front desk....but finally (on her fourth try) got an answer from the concierge. Even at a Motel 6 you will get an answer when you dial the operator. It seems that they just can't be bothered to pick up the phone.
The hallways are full of VERY worn out carpets...and really look like some cheap old flop house...not a 5 a 4 a 3 or even a 2 star hotel. Amazing really.
While down in the lobby bar...which is indeed very pretty....as one would expect from a building that 500 years ago was a palace....I was having a Gin and Tonic. This cost me $25.00. This is not a misprint, I said twenty five dollars for a Gin and Tonic. Perhaps I could live with this if not for the haughty and even distainful service offered by the "waiters". It's like they have a pre-rehearsed drill....you ask them a question....like...."what sort of nibbles can we order"...and they talk to you quickly...moving away from you all the time as though they have someting MUCH more important to do (and this while we were virtually the only people in the joint).
I had to get up to go to the bathroom, and not wanting to go all the way up to our room I went to the public bathroom on the ground floor. Big mistake. Dirty.....and I don't just mean a little dirty.....I mean old, stained paint on the doors that nobody had bothered to clean in a VERY long time. No paper towels in the container to dry my hands. My wife had to go a little while later and reported not only the above complaints about the Ladies room, but also no toilet paper!!. She stopped at the front desk to complain on the way back to the table and was told "We can't check all the time, a lot of people use it". Jesus.